The Milwaukee Bucks are rounding out their 2011-12 NBA season, so I wanted to take the opportunity to refine the indexing project I started at the beginning of the year and ask you for feedback before I unleash a full 2012 NBA Playoffs preview that indexes each team over at Hardwood Paroxysm. Take a look at how Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis, Ekpe Udoh, Larry Sanders, Mike Dunleavy, Beno Udrih and the rest of the Bucks stack up against their positional counterparts around the NBA, and please offer some feedback on which visualization of the data you prefer.
Aside from the snazzy visuals, I've also retooled my method a bit. More on this after the jump...
Here's What Is Happening: I have researched and indexed player stats relative to the relevant positional league average, meaning that a score of 100 is average for each player at his respective position. This time I've also parsed out the minutes per game thresholds for each position and used the closest marker for a more accurate comparison -- 10+ min/gm, 20+ min/gm or 30+ min/gm. The general trend is that more minutes per game leads to better production at each position and for each stat, which makes sense if you believe teams tend to play better players more minutes than worse players. I used the minutes threshold to help compare players at their own level (starters, bench players, deep bench reserves) and help clarify production as it relates to the various roles on a team.
An Example: Brandon Jennings is a PG who plays 35.5 min/gm, so I compare each of his advanced stat values to the averages for NBA PGs that played 30+ min/gm this season. For example, Jennings as an Assist Rate of 27.64, while the average NBA PG (30+ min) has an Assist Rate of 41.21. I then express Brandon's AR as a percentage of the positional average. In this case, Jennings comes out with a value of 67.1, meaning his Assist Rate is 32.9% worse than the average PG that plays 30+ min per game. In other words, everything is stated relative to the relevant positional average.
Two visualizations of the data are attached, so take a look at each one and let me know which chart feels more intuitive and natural for the analysis. I have my suspicions, but I feel it's best to give the whole thing a test run. Without further ado, here are your Milwaukee Bucks: